By VANESSA ARRINGTON, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, August 2, 2006

HAVANA -- When Fidel Castro was 10, he nearly died of appendicitis. Since then, he has survived military assaults and even poisoned cigars and milkshakes. Now, two weeks shy of his 80th birthday, surgery has sidelined the leader of Cuba's revolution.

After a life filled with near-death experiences, the intestinal bleeding that forced Castro to hand over power and undergo surgery may be one of the closest calls yet for the true survivor.

The current crisis follows a lifetime of close shaves.

In April 1948, Castro joined throngs in Bogota, Colombia, to protest creation of the Organization of American States. The rioting spun out of control, and Castro, 21, took refuge in the Cuban Embassy as the army began hunting down leftists.

During his university days in gangster-ridden Havana, Castro's political activities against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista were risky enough that he began carrying a gun.

On July 26, 1953, Castro launched what many would later call a suicidal attack on the Moncada military barracks in Cuba's eastern city of Santiago.

The assault failed miserably and Castro called off the mission -- and was almost left to fend for himself, according to Santiago historian Manuel Pevida.

"All of a sudden he was all alone, just standing there in the street in front of the barracks," said Pevida. "Everyone in his group had left, but those in the final car realized he wasn't with them and turned back and picked him up."

A few days after the Moncada assault, a lieutenant named Pedro Sarria, sent to capture the attackers, found Castro asleep on the floor of a peasant hut in the hills above Santiago.

Instead of delivering him to the Moncada barracks, where the army was torturing and killing his comrades, Sarria put Castro in a city jail where the presence of journalists made it tricky for authorities to make the rebel leader "disappear."

Despite early brushes with death, he continued to take risks.

After an amnesty freed him from prison, he formed a rebel army in Mexico, then returned to Cuba on a crowded yacht that nearly sank in a storm.

His rebel army ousted Batista on Jan. 1, 1959. Once in power, his luck continued -- to the chagrin of the U.S., furious with Cuba's move toward communism.

The CIA began training Cuban exiles for the Bay of Pigs invasion and plotting Castro's assassination. Castro was on the battlefield during the 1961 invasion but was unhurt. Within 72 hours Cuba defeated the invaders, capturing more than 1,000 of them in what became a colossal embarrassment for the U.S.

Later plans to assassinate him were dramatic, original -- and ultimately unsuccessful. More than 30 plots included poisoning his cigars, recruiting a former young German lover and hiding a gun in a TV camera.